A Girl's Chilling Death in Gaza

Iman Hams's relatives mourn at the family house during her funeral last month in the Rafah refugee camp. She had been shot at least 20 times. (Khalil Hamra -- AP)

Shmuel Shenfeld, one of the indicted officer's attorneys, said the captain opened fire because of "suspicion of a penetration by a terrorist" near the outpost. He added, "I believe he will be acquitted because he acted the way one has to act in order to neutralize a threat on his soldiers."

Shenfeld denied that the captain pumped bullets into the dead girl, saying he was firing in response to shooting from the direction of the nearby refugee camp.

The indictment issued against the captain alleged that he called several of his subordinate officers and soldiers into his office a week after the incident and "tried to convince" them that they "noticed shooting near the body of the deceased only," rather than shooting at the body. The indictment also accused the captain of asking his men to testify that he hit the body with the burst of fire "by mistake" as he was withdrawing from the area.

Shenfeld said that some soldiers in the unit were trying to frame his client.

The shooting occurred on the edge of the Rafah refugee camp in the far southwestern corner of the Gaza Strip near the Egyptian border -- the most dangerous combat zone in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The youngster, Iman Hams, dressed in the striped pinafore worn by girls who attend the U.N.-run schools in Gaza's refugee camps, was on her way to class just before 7 a.m. on a Tuesday morning, her 25-year-old brother, Ihab Hams, said in an interview. Her school is located on the edge of the refugee camp, a few hundred yards from the Rafiakh Jewish settlement to the north and an even shorter distance from an Israeli military border post to the west.

When the school called her family to report that she did not show up for classes and that a girl had been shot nearby, Ihab Hams said he raced to the scene to investigate.

"She was going to school like every day, and the soldiers started to shoot," Hams said he was told by a teacher at the school who witnessed the incident. "She was injured in her leg and became hysterical. She started to run. A teacher tried to stop her, but she didn't listen because she was so scared.

"Then they shot her," he said.

When he returned home, his father asked if Iman, one of nine children, was the girl being reported dead on the radio.

" 'No, she's okay,' " Ihab said his father replied. "I stood at the door and I felt so sad. My father asked me again. Then I told him, 'Iman has passed away.' "

Special correspondent Islam Abdulkarim in Gaza City and researcher Samuel Sockol contributed to this report.